Kudos to the Daily Courier’s Ron Seymour for highlighting Kelowna’s bid for a 2016 Teddy Waste Award.

Seymour had a front page column yesterday looking at the City of Kelowna’s budget. Among other headscratching decisions, he reported this:

There it is, on page L12 of the city budget. It’s the item, among many contenders for the title, that merits this year’s Most Dubious Spending Award at Kelowna City Hall.

The city is spending $70,000 of your tax dollars to find out if city workers are happy.

Never mind that a similar survey only two years ago found that 71 per cent of the nearly 900 municipal workers were satisfied with their jobs. Given their high rates of pay, iron-clad job security and generous pensions, it’s mind-boggling that 30 per cent of city workers say they’re not satisfied. Maybe they should quit!

Ha ha. As if they ever would.

Where else could they find a job where their bosses would lavish so much money on an “employee engagement survey project,” as the $70,000 questionnaire is grandly called, to find out if they’re happy in their work?

Put another way, Kelowna taxpayers will spend $77.78 per city worker to survey and see if they’re happy.

$77.78! What a waste of money.

At the same time, Kelowna is planning to hike property taxes 4.1% - twice the rate of inflation. Terrible news for families and people on fixed incomes.